


A Great Noise of Falling Water

by oubliance



Category: A Place of Greater Safety - Hilary Mantel
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-27
Updated: 2012-12-27
Packaged: 2017-11-22 15:45:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/611485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oubliance/pseuds/oubliance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Théroigne and Camille do. Or … do they?</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Great Noise of Falling Water

_We are always, however, in danger._  
—Anne Théroigne

 

July 14th, 1789: ‘This is where de Sade lived,’ she said. ‘That soldier told me.’ She was dry and looked quite hungry. ‘Come on, Camille.’

‘They must have reached City Hall by now. Why didn’t we go with them?’

‘I wanted to show you this.’ One of her ribbons lost itself along the way, so that now his coat shows only heaven: a limp blue shred. Blood is somewhere in the street. She sees that somebody has hurt his mouth. The sort of raw mark she’s more used to seeing on girls’ faces.

‘Probably we are missing something very, very important. I’d like to put it – whatever it is – into my next pamphlet. Since I will surely have to write a new one. I mean, things don’t stay the same, do they?’ He stopped speaking so that she could scratch his neck with her blunt nails. After a while, she was beginning to look bored, so he said, ‘I don’t think it would have been too bad, here. It’s somewhere to live, isn’t it?’

‘I thought the same. Three meals a day. More, probably.’ I do believe he understands, she thought, what I’ve endured.

*

The singing on the stage died away. She was about to be impressive to the girls: for Théroigne, everything is quite different. She only comes to the theatre to let everyone see how little use she has for them these days. She will stop for Camille, though. His wan face has pierced the gloom and he looks unhappy to see her.

Camille wonders how it is that he still has to wait for Fabre, among unchanged grease and dust. He is cold, as though it’s any month but August. He will pretend to ask Fabre’s advice about some of the compromising papers folded away inside his coat: he is not sober, and will soon be even less so.

Théroigne’s expression, avid but oddly controlled, makes him nervous.

‘I remember this.’ She scrabbled with her nails at the scab on his palm. ‘I thought you were going to cry afterwards. Still, the Bastille cheered you up rather well. You lost my ribbon, but I hadn’t paid for it.’

Louise Robert’s ribs dug into my skull, he thinks. We were bone to bone. She did not feel that I had been wholly successful. ‘I did not go to the Bastille,’ he says. ‘Did you, Anne?’

**Author's Note:**

> The first story I wrote about Camille.
> 
>  
> 
> [](http://www.tracemyip.org/)  
> 


End file.
